


Without Him

by ERNest



Series: The Little Things [3]
Category: Company - Sondheim/Furth
Genre: F/M, Loneliness, Microfic, Moving On, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 00:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20573810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: Joanne knows it first: He's not coming.Each of his old friends handles the Bobby-shaped hole in their lives differently. A series of moments, after.





	Without Him

Joanne knows it first – he’s not coming. Not tonight for a surprise party and maybe never again. It’s been over four hours and as she tells Larry, it’s time to go. For the first time she can remember she doesn’t want to drink. She did this to him, or for him, whichever word she wants to use at any given moment. She’s absolutely certain that she was the one to drive him towards his epiphany and not only because she has to be at the center of all things. She saw his eyes in the moment when he asked who he was going to take care of. Truthfully she probably knew already that he was going to do something like this.

She spends more time than is healthy wanting him to keep in touch, but she knows he’s going to be just fine. Maybe she’s going to be fine after this too. This is something that feels peculiarly like hope. She wonders if she’s coming down with something.

***

Sarah throws herself into her karate lessons and pins Harry to the ground three times in a row. Meanwhile, he stays on the wagon but starts eating more. He joins Sarah on her diet and they fail together.

***

April has no idea that Bobby was gone, so she knocks on his apartment door and an old man opens it. She walks in without asking. “Oh, it’s decorated so interestingly. But it seems like _you_ actually live here. That’s nice. Is it still special when you spend so much time here?”

The old man stares.

“Anyway, can you tell me where Bobby is?”

“Lady, I don’t know any Bobby. What are you doing here?”

“Maybe he got married and found a bigger place. I guess that makes sense.”

She wanders away and the old man, his day five times more surreal, goes back to the New Yorker.

***

Every day Amy suggests that she will call Bobby tomorrow and every day Paul says to give him some time to call them first.

She trains herself to worry less about this distant friend. He finds ways to tell her that she's beautiful and that he'll love her forever without using those words that distress her so much.

They'll talk about it in the morning.

***

Joanne finds that she is a lady who lunches and pushes Bobby to see the same thing about himself. But when he leaves, she can’t help being terribly disappointed in him.

“This isn’t how you’re supposed to deal with your problems,” she says, but the Bobby in her mind turns the mirror back on her. She can’t change by herself, that much is obvious. “Larry,” she says, her voice breaking, “I would like a cigarette.”

“Come here,” he tells her, and pats the couch next to him. She curls up with her head on his chest and listens to his heartbeat. (It’s slower than it was when they were first courting. They’re getting old.) “Now why don’t you tell me what’s really the matter?”

“I want to stop looking at people just so I can categorize the reasons I don’t like them. And I want.” She’s never admitted this before, even to herself. “I want to like myself.”

“You’re tired of being a luncher.” He gets up and plays something slow and sweet. “Come dance with me,” he says.

***

Peter wonders if it’s his fault that Bobby’s gone. Every day he wishes he hadn’t hit on him that one day on the balcony. He’s glad that Marta and Susan hit it off so well though. They’ve needed someone so fresh and excited in their lives.

***

Jenny smokes pot again to see if she likes it better the second time. She doesn’t.

David walks in on her crying. “Are you okay?”

She has to think about that one for a while. “No, she finally says, and he kisses her on the forehead and just holds her.

“I’m not alone, I’m not alone,” he thinks, but worries, like always, that this is the moment she drifts away.


End file.
